To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much has been spent on (a) the purchase of and (b) bills for (i) BlackBerrys and (ii) other mobile telephones for (A) Ministers, (B) special advisers and (C) civil servants in his Department in each year since 2005. (268249)

The requested information could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The Department does not record costs at the level of detail required to allow a breakdown per device or for the categories of individual requested.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many (a) BlackBerrys and (b) other mobile telephones have been provided to (i) Ministers, (ii) special advisers and (iii) civil servants in his Department in each year since 2005. (268293)

DEFRA procures BlackBerry services and mobile phones via two different arrangements.

1. In the case of BlackBerry services, these are provided through the IBM contract. DEFRA is unable to provide a breakdown of past usage of BlackBerry services as this would require a manual trawl of historical data that would incur disproportionate cost. We have shown the usage figures for March 2009 for the core Department for information as an indication of current usage:

2. In the case of mobile phones, these are purchased via OGC’s Mobile Solutions contract. DEFRA is unable to provide the data at the level of detail requested for historical data. The total number of connections for the core Department and a breakdown for March 2009 data is included in the following table:

Breakdown of historical data could not be provided without incurring disproportionate cost.